The M Word

Edited by Kerry Clare

A Dropped Threads-style anthology, assembling original and inspiring works by some of Canada’s best younger female writers — such as Heather Birrell, Saleema Nawaz, Susan Olding, Diana Fitzgerald Bryden, Carrie Snyder, and Alison Pick — The M Word asks everyday women and writers, some of whom are on the unconventional side of motherhood, to share their emotions and tales of maternity.

Whether they are stepmothers or mothers who have experienced abortion, infertility, adoption, or struggles with having more or less children, all these writers are women who have faced down motherhood on the other side of the white picket fence. It is time that motherhood opened its gates to include everyone, not just the picture postcard stories.

The M Word is a fabulous collection by a talented author and blogger, which is bound to attract readers from all walks of motherhood. The anthology that presents women’s lives as they are really lived, probing the intractable connections between motherhood and womanhood with all necessary complexity and contradiction laid out in a glorious tangle.

Praise for The M Word

“The M Word: Conversations about Motherhood...presents a rich, dynamic, occasionally conflicting conversation about motherhood that includes all women. [We] deserve to hear a conversation about motherhood that is as beautiful and scary and messy and complex as motherhood itself.” —Monica Frantz in Literary Mama

“This is a powerful collection of stories by Canadian women of various ages, and every woman will benefit from reading it.” — Cara Smusiak, Quill & Quire”

The M Word: Conversations about Motherhood, a powerful, female-driven anthology of short personal essays, poems, and illustrations, tells the many stories women so rarely share. . . . The M Word is a meditation on the fickle emotional uncertainty awarded to mothers. It breaks down the walls of maternal isolation and offers companionship to anyone who has not had the fairy-tale journey to motherhood. These stories show us that the extraordinary gift of motherhood cannot be accepted without relinquishing something spectacular.” — Rachel Harry, The National Post

“Books on motherhood make me wary — the doctrines, the camps, the divisions! But The M Word is different. It invites you in, insists that you listen, and provokes you to speak out and speak up. A lively, provocative, engaging, and moving conversation with those committed to mothering, those committed to not mothering, those conflicted by mothering, and those who wonder what mothering means, anyway. In other words, all of us.” — Miranda Hill, author of Sleeping Funny